Connect the Dots: Best Practices for Prototyping
Designer’s Notebook: DFM Principles for Flexible Circuits
Elementary, Mr. Watson: Flex Designs—The Future and BeyondAlpha Takes the Greenfield Route
February 28, 2023 | Nolan Johnson, I-Connect007Estimated reading time: 2 minutes
Alpha Circuit is a PCB fabricator located in Elmhurst, Illinois. Given that the launch of a new PCB fab is a rare occasion these days, we caught up with the senior team—Prashant Patel, president and CEO; Steve Smith, general manager; Steve Ryan, sales and direct support—guiding the buildout of Alpha Circuit’s brand new 44,000 square foot facility. They discuss what goes into equipment selection and line design, and the timing couldn’t have been better. At press time, the new facility was on schedule for test production by the end of January 2023.
Throughout the conversation, the Alpha team shared its methods for designing the facility, the parts of the fabrication process that are critical to get exactly right, and where the surprises were in the process.
Nolan Johnson: Gentlemen, welcome, and congratulations on your new facility. Let’s start with a little background about the company.
Steve Ryan: Alpha Circuit started in 1981, as a single- and double-sided board shop. Zenith was one of our big customers early on. We did a lot of punching and crunching back then and it is what really catapulted the revenue stream for us. When I joined the company in 2009, we were comfortably an eight to 12-layer multilayer and double-sided manufacturer. In 2013, we started doing flex and rigid-flex, increased our multilayers up to 28 layers, and started manufacturing copper-based pedestal-type design work.
Prashant Patel: When I acquired the company in 2020, my vision was to continue Alpha Circuit the way it was, while building a new facility to meet the higher technology demands. We purchased and renovated a 44,000 square foot facility, then ordered the equipment. It takes a long time to source equipment—you get the quotes, have it installed, and then get it running up to speed. That process has taken us over three years.
Steve Smith: I joined the company approximately two months ago. My background is HDI: stacked microvias, staggered microvias, along with high-speed digital materials, low-loss materials. I was hired to put the technology part of it together, getting the proper people and processes in place, so we can handle microelectronics down to 25-micron line and space and down to 3-mil pads.
Johnson: Great, thank you for that. Now, I want to talk today about your recent equipment purchases.
Smith: We have purchased a laser drill, and we have brand-new 200,000 RPM drill machines in place to do high aspect ratio holes. We also have a brand-new plating line with state-of-the-art chemistries to be able to do copper fill and through-hole plating in the same process along with being able to manufacture stacked vias starting with a 2-mil core substrate and stacking up to seven or eight lamination cycles.
To read this entire conversation, which appeared in the February 2023 issue of SMT007 Magazine, click here.
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